


High Five

by periwren



Category: Real Person Fiction, Sander Sides, Sanders Sides (Web Series), Thomas Sanders, Video Blogging RPF, youtube - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Name-Calling, but happy end, outcast, school story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 23:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16073150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periwren/pseuds/periwren
Summary: Virgil is a shy lonely school kid that always gets picked on. His classmates have made it a new game to jump scare him and eventually it all ends in tears for poor Virgil.





	High Five

Virgil was an outcast in his class. He wasn’t very social and the other kids always found him dark, creepy and weird, so he always wound up a loner. He was quite shy and got nervous talking to other people easily and the fact that because of his parents job he was constantly moving from town to town every six months made it very difficult to make any friends.

His parents job wasn’t a well paying job either. It meant that Virgil didn’t get to have fashionable or label branded clothes. His clothes were black and baggy (so he could grow into them), even his hair was the longest of any of the boys in the class because he couldn’t afford to go to the hairdressers often.

This new class was better than some of his previous schools. Sure everybody avoided him like the plague but the worst he got was his classmates making jokes about him, this class he didn’t have bullies that resorted to physical violence. The running joke was to try and come up with the “best” nickname for him, so far the leading pick was “Emo Nightmare.”

Today it seemed his class must have made a new nickname for him or something like that because a group of his classmates were huddled on one side of the schoolyard looking over at him pointing and laughing. Virgil tried to ignore them. He couldn’t hear them clearly but sometimes he would hear one of them go “You do it!” and try and push one of his classmates in his direction. Virgil hoped they wouldn’t come over here.

This was an okay spot to have lunch, there were lots of people around, but no one ever sat with Virgil.  But he mainly chose this spot because he could make a quick getaway to the office or library if something happened.

“Okay I’ll do it!” “I bet he won’t do it.” “Careful you might get rabies!”

Oh no.  A bunch of kids were walking over to him. Virgil already grabbed a hold of his bag ready to run. The front of the group were the popular boys in his class, behind them was a gaggle of popular giggly girls. Virgil found other boys scary because they might punch him, he found girls scary because they were girls.

“Hey Emo Nightmare.” said Roman. Virgil hunched up and looked down at the ground. Roman had a witty and sharp tongue, Virgil never knew how to respond when Roman made fun of him.

“High five.” continued Roman holding up his hand in front of Virgil’s face. Everyone was staring to see what Virgil would do, it made him really nervous.

“High five.” repeated Roman “Don’t you know what a High Five is Incredible Sulk?” as he pushed his open palm closer to Virgil’s face as the other kids laughed at him.

“Told you he wouldn’t do it.” remarked Remy a tall kid who never took of his sun glasses even when they had swimming class. Roman frowned at him.

“C’mon it’s not that hard.” said Deceit giving Virgil a small shove to the shoulder (Virgil didn’t know what Deceit’s real name was, he was called Deceit because he never did his homework and was always coming up with more and more ridiculous lies about it).

Virgil’s flight or fight response kicked in as he bolted to the library.

Behind him he heard the other kids laughing again and Remy saying loudly “Told you Roman, you owe me five bucks.” Virgil was relieved that no one was following him.

 

Two things resulted from the “High Five” lunch incident.

1, Roman had invented a new nickname for Virgil: Panic at the Everywhere.

2, It was now a thing to jump scare Virgil by asking him for a High Five.  This had started with people just coming up to Virgil and asking him for a regular High Five but after Deceit had managed to scare Virgil by hiding behind a door and then jumping out to ask him which caused Virgil to drop his pencil case and all his books (which all the kids found hilarious) it had evolved into a jump scare.

This went on for some time, the teacher didn’t seem to notice how much it was upsetting Virgil, they probably figured it was one of those internet crazes that the kids were always picking up. And occasionally the kids would do it to each other and dramatically High Five so it wasn’t obvious that Virgil was getting picked on.

Virgil wondered if maybe he should just High Five somebody back one day. But he was too nervous to try this out. What if that just made everything worse? What if the other person smacked his hand really really hard and it hurt? What if he didn’t do it properly and everyone made fun of him for sucking at High Fiving?

Time went on and until one day it became too much for Virgil. It was on Patton’s birthday. Patton was one of the nicer boys in the class. He had only tried to get Virgil to High Five once and didn’t do it again when Virgil didn’t High Five him back. Patton didn’t make up mean names to call Virgil and would sometimes smile and say hello to him in class. But Virgil was too shy to talk to Patton because Patton was so cheerful and talkative and outgoing. But Virgil liked Patton he was okay.

For Patton’s birthday his mum baked some lovely cupcakes for the class “and I helped. And only ate seven of them to test for flavour” said Patton. The cupcakes had a generous dollop of whipped cream and a strawberry on top.  There was one for everyone in the class including the teacher. Everyone sang happy birthday to Patton and then was handed a cupcake.

Suddenly Roman came up to the side of Virgil without him noticing and said loudly “HEY CHARLIE FROWN HIGH FIVE!” in Virgil’s peripheral vision he saw a hand coming towards his face.  Virgil yelped and brought his hands up to protect himself. But he didn’t get hit which was a relief, but he heard some gasps and then the other kids started laughing. Virgil looked down and saw his cupcake on the dirty floor the cream splattered everywhere it was ruined.

Virgil looked at the cupcake and felt his eyes start to well up. He knew he really shouldn’t cry because it would just make the other kids tease him more but he couldn’t help it. It had looked like a really nice cupcake and he really wanted to eat it. He heard the teacher snap at Roman for being silly and telling the other kids it wasn’t funny. The classes laugher died off as Virgil started crying properly with loud sobs. The teacher came over to Virgil and patted him on the back “Here Virgil you can have my cupcake-I’ve only eaten the strawberry.” Patton came over too “Here you can have my one -I’ve just had one bite.”

But Virgil shook his head and kept on crying. Virgil could feel the eyes of all the kids in his class watching him. “Um – you can have my cupcake.” said Roman in a small voice. Virgil shook his head vigorously “No I-I want to go home. I d-don’t like this class. Everyone is mean.”

“Virgil what do you mean?” asked the teacher but Virgil just kept on crying and wouldn’t say anymore. Eventually he was taken to the office where they called his parents to come and pick him up, he had stopped crying by then but wouldn’t talk to his parent either. He spent the rest of the day playing quietly with his colouring books.

The next day he said he didn’t want to go to school. He wasn’t like Deceit he didn’t make up a lie like he had a stomach ache, he just told his parents that he didn’t want to go. Virgil didn’t know that his parents had been talking to the school and his teacher said that they were going to find out what Virgil meant when he said, “Everyone is mean.” So his parents let him stay home for the day.

But the next day he had to go back to school but his parents took him in a bit late so he wouldn’t have to be at school before the morning bell rang. Virgil came in and sat at his desk and try to make himself as small as possible, he wouldn’t look at anyone.

“Ahem.” said the Teacher firmly, “Class is there anything anyone would like to say before we start the lesson.”

“WE’RE SORRY VIRGIL.” chorused the class. Virgil sank down lower in his chair.

“What for?” asked the Teacher.

“For laughing at you.” “For calling names.” “For not being nice and good friends.”

“And is there anything we want to give Virgil?”

Each of the kids pulled a card out from their desks and came over and gave it to Virgil – the teacher had checked to make sure that they had all written nice apologies only, even Roman and Deceit.  The teacher had found out how excluded Virgil had been and all the name calling and teasing and given the class a very strict talking to about bullying and called their parents yesterday so some of the kids had had a double whammy talk about their behaviour when they got home. Especially Roman whose mother was a blogger so she knew all about hurtful comments from haters.

Virgil was a bit overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do so he just clutched onto the cards and would read them later. Roman also gave him a paper bag with his card. Inside was a huge chocolate chip muffin. Roman gave Virgil a kind of awkward hug because it is hard to hug someone who is slouching on a chair when you are standing.

The rest of the lessons that morning went on as usual but Virgil was feeling much better now. When lunch came the teacher came up to Virgil, “Virgil – Patton, Logan and Thomas would like to sit and eat lunch with you if that’s alright?” Virgil gulped sitting with people made him nervous he didn’t know what to say. But it seemed he didn’t get a choice in the matter as Patton linked arms with him and took him over to their spot. Virgil didn’t say much but the other three didn’t seem to mind, they didn’t ask him too many questions and didn’t get upset that he was being too quiet. About halfway through lunch Roman and his friends came over. Virgil started sweating – this was it, he was going to get bashed for getting them all in trouble or they were going to start teasing him for crying the other day.

Roman stood next to them and shuffled his feet awkwardly “Aren’t you going to eat the muffin?” Virgil hadn’t eaten the muffin that he got in class yet he was saving it for last. He quickly snatched it up and held it out to Roman – of course Roman wanted it back, he was just giving it to him in class to show how good he was for the teacher.

Roman was surprised at how quickly Virgil picked up the muffin and he also noticed how shallow his breathing had become. Patton frowned, “Roman you can’t take it back!”

“I’m not. I just asked why he wasn’t eating it. D-don’t you like it?”

Virgil had become tongue tied. Everyone was staring at him again. His hands started shaking.

“Virgil are you okay?” asked Logan.

Virgil put the muffin back down on the table and nodded as he took in a shaky breath.

Everyone was still staring at him. He wished he could think of something to say!

“Um look – I am sorry for all the nicknames and stuff -okay? I was stupid and didn’t think it was a big deal but it was and it wasn’t funny at all. I was a huge jerkface but-but maybe we can start over hmm?” Roman held out a closed fist to Virgil. Virgil hesitated as it took him a second to realise that Roman wanted to fist bump him like bros do.  He had an idea. Virgil held up his hand.

“Um how about a High Five?” 


End file.
